don't love someone
by callmesandy
Summary: Kensi is troubled, not cray-cray, Marty corrects himself. (my "vote" for they are totally banging offscreen in fiction form.)


notes: no profit garnered, not mine. Thanks to PB for beta. Sequel to a wool sweater on my heart. Canon-compliant to me for s5-s6 to date. xx

**don't love someone **  
><strong>to save yourself<strong>  
><strong>love someone to <strong>  
><strong>destroy who you used to be<strong>  
><strong>(let it burn) <strong>  
><strong>-a softer world 1088<strong>

List of things Marty has done that were really fucking stupid:  
>1. [redacted]<br>2. [redacted]  
>3. [redacted - some things he just won't think about, it's absolutely the best option he thinks. Put it in the past, make up something better]<br>4. Not fucking Kensi the minute they were partnered up and he was over Jess. That would have been a great idea. He thinks she would have been up for some casual physical release with him, he is actually pretty sure. She was definitely in that sex is not intimate kind of connection mode back then. It would have been perfect, actually. They could have tackled all of their relationship shit from a much better foundation.

Sure, they started sleeping together before they had a relationship per se, but everything was already so present. They were already intimate. Sex would have helped all that not be so absolutely fraught.

He keeps expecting one of their shrinks to tell them to knock it off. Stop playing at being a couple when they have no idea how to do it. He doesn't see James that often anymore, like once a month, but Kensi's regular as rain with her guy. And her guy is a former Marine, Korean-American hard ass who stares down even perfectly nice people who were just waiting in the waiting room for their sort of girlfriend. Kensi agreed to see someone while she was in Afghanistan, she volunteered to do it, he didn't even bring it up or say how James thought she was cray-cray. Kensi is troubled, not cray-cray, he corrects himself.

He sat in James's office, after the stupid box-in-a-box thing, and after Kensi told him that morning that she was sent to Afghanistan because Hetty thought she would see through the White Ghost thing and save Jack. He sat there angry, betrayed, all of it aimed at Hetty. He talked himself out of that while James made that face he makes when he thinks Marty is feeling wrong. But Marty also knows from James that he is allowed to feel how he wants.

He went to Kensi's that night and they've been sleeping together and being together ever since. But there are ups and downs and he understands why Sgt Shrink Badass would tell Kensi to dump him and get better on her own. She definitely wigged out about Talia, but that all got ironed out with a med adjustment. Still.

Theoretically, a shrink wouldn't tell you to dump someone but Kensi can be very literal about orders. Or she can read too much into small nudges. Marty isn't exactly sure, but he is very sure that he worries that Kensi will decide to kick him to the no-sex curb at someone's advice.

Malty nudges his foot and Monty straight up whines so he walks back to the apartment. He opens the door saying, "Can you believe Callen and Sam today?"

Kensi doesn't even look up from her tablet to say, "What are you talking about?"

"I didn't know you had a new puppy," Marty says in his best G impression. It's a little too Clooney, but he thinks it gets the point across.

"You actually had not mentioned it in the past month which is, frankly, astonishing, given how much you run your mouth."

"Sometimes you like that," he says, trying to wink at her. She still doesn't look up which is good because he fails.

She says, "Sometimes, but not as many times as you might think." She does look up but only to smile at Malty jumping up on her lap. "Tell me again why Sam or Callen should know you have a puppy, a super sweet adorable puppy," she says, talking mostly to Malty. The puppy wags his tail, lapping it up.

"Eric did," Marty says, sitting down next to her on the couch. He crosses his legs, his knee resting against Kensi's warm thigh. She imperceptibly snuggles closer.

"Oh, you think everyone should be following you on facebook and instagram? Even I don't check that every day," she says. Then she shifts very perceptibly and sits in his lap. She looks at him like she loves him. He wonders if she'll ever say it. He thinks about saying it every day. He thinks it would not be stupid and she would not run away. Probably. Pretty big risk, though.

He blinks and says, "They would only have to check once. I talk about him every day."

"Poor sad Malty, rescued from being rejected by the K9 project," she says, sticking her lower lip out.

He can't not kiss her when she does that, so he does kiss her. She sits back and thus puts more pressure from her lovely pussy to his very happy dick. He squeezes her ass. She says, "They're probably super sad they missed your whole dilemma naming him, should it be Monty, Jr or Minty or Malty, should you flip a coin or see what he responds to…"

He is really too hard right now to listen to her make fun of him. He loves when she makes fun of him but he really loves even more when she's naked and he's naked and they're not on this couch which they've tried to fuck on, but he way prefers the bed.

"How about the bed," he says.

"Yup," she says, getting off him to get in a better place to get him off. He laughs at himself as he follows her into his bedroom.

Three hours later, he's watching her sleep. She makes him laugh, she's sometimes very funny and she laughs at his jokes or at least reacts to them, she's generally supportive and she has his back. She is often a bad liar when they aren't in the field. He still wonders what she wants. He wonders a lot. Because their communication sucks, because they should have had sex long before they really knew each other so that would have just been out of the equation. He should tell her that theory.

He should tell her he loves her. He will definitely tell her that she is the reason he chose Malty because she told him it was the dumbest name ever in an instagram comment. So now it's funny, her calling out Malty and snuggling him and purring Malty, Malty.


End file.
